“Santa has…tentacles.” There was a mix of surprise and confusion in his voice, but I wasn’t sure why.

The aliens that had settled on Earth had taken a variety of fun jobs and there seemed to be very little logic to some of them. If he wanted to explore being Santa for the holidays, who were we to tell him no?

“He’s got a great beard, though.” It was much better looking than last year’s Santa even if it was just as fake. “And he’s clearly having fun. Look at how they’re all wiggling.”
And the grin he was wearing… Santa was having fun.

“I’m not…are you sure this is a good idea?” Smart people could talk people into stupid shit and I was afraid I’d ended up in one of those situations.

Nicholas snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

He was so helpful.

His partner on the other hand tried to be helpful and patted my head with one of his smaller tentacles, even though it made him feel weird to touch someone else because of the mating bond. “You are a submissive human with a preference for tentacles instead of arms. You will be highly sought after for conversation or pleasure.”

I’d worked with him long enough to know what that translated into…

This was the weirdest munch ever.

Somehow it’d ended up being all straight people besides me and possibly one other exception…an interesting one.

“Your innocent attire and the way your body reacts to youthful educational stimuli suggests you would be classified as a little.” His voice was almost mesmerizing and it took me a second to realize I had no idea what the tall alien had said.

Huh? Innocent attire?

His sentence or question, or fuck, string of words had me looking down at what I was wearing because at that moment I had no idea what I’d put on.

Okay, I was starting to see what he meant.

It was entirely possible that bringing Reid to a wedding slash collaring ceremony might not have been the best idea.

However, in my defense, he’d asked me about it when I’d been exhausted after pulling a double shift, and all I’d wanted was to play with my toys. He’d been trying to be nice and had made me dinner with wine and everything, and my guilt had made me answer honestly when he’d asked what I had planned for the week.

“Nolan, a very interesting…gentleman just asked me what I thought about public displays of punishments in control-based relationships.” Reid’s eyes were just a little too wide as he handed me my drink.

Clearly, sending him to the reception table by himself hadn’t been the best idea. I was on a winning streak this week. “Was he taking a survey or coming on to you?”

As I sipped what seemed to be punch someone had spiked, Reid froze and cocked his head. “I don’t know.”

“Then it was a survey. It’s obvious when they’re interested.” And no matter how good-looking Reid was, he didn’t radiate an invitation to flirt with him.

I was pretty sure he was throwing marshmallows at me.

Maybe.

Marshmallows generally didn’t fall from the sky, even in the grocery store.

But people didn’t just throw food in the grocery store…no matter what species that person happened to be.

And there was another one.

Picking up the flying marshmallow, I stuck it in my pocket with the rest of them and did my best to look boring as I grabbed a box of cereal off the shelf. Cameron would have known what to do, but then again, he had George and a lot more firsthand experience with the fascinating new species that was now sharing our neighborhoods.

The closest thing that I’d had to personal experience was saying hello to some of my neighbors and a few awkward conversations through drainpipes.

I was promised little green men, not octopus people with a name that had so many random letters in it the news people were having conniptions trying to pronounce it right. And the debates over the right way to use it in a sentence were even worse. Was it supposed to be said like “They were from Greece” or “They were Greek?”

The debate from the science guys on one of the morning talk shows got so vicious, they’d actually had to cut to an early commercial break when one scientist slugged the other. Daytime television had never been more insane.

But as annoying as it all was, I was just grateful that politics wasn’t the biggest issue anymore. When the aliens who’d invaded weren’t little green men but multi-tentacled things that asked for asylum and wanted to pay taxes, everything else took a back seat.

Especially when they’d settled in New York and tried to use the sewer system as a secondary subway. That had been an epic mess that had dominated the top news feeds for weeks until regulations could be put in place. It’d been nuts.

And as a plumber, I’d know.

I’d made more in the first six months of their “invasion” than I had in the previous three years combined. Every housewife in America wanted a screen or mesh installed in their shower and a lock on the toilet.